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Thank you so much, Micro$oft. You completely destroyed what was left of Nokia and left thousands without a job in Finland. Eflop was injected into Nokia by M$ to bring down share prices enough so they could crab Nokia cheaply. As a Finn I am never buying another M$ product ever again. And I will not recommend anyone else to buy their crappy products either, be it Windows, Office, a Lumia phone or an Xbox, which btw isn't even for sale in Finland yet. I hope their Lumia phone range flops completely and causes billions of dollars of losses in the process.I hate you, Microsoft. Die.Reply

N8 did pretty well and Symbian transitioned fine to Qt/QML/QtMobility, capacitive multitouch and so on. Sure Symbian was abandoned by other players, but now Qt is the framework behind Blackberry 10 and so on. Windows Phone was abandoned too so. Just means everything slipped out of their hands. What was really dinosaurs was the S40/Asha line. It's really just the 520 that has done better than N8 in sales per quarter. Nokia's profits in the mobile division didn't slump (to losses) until after the burning platform memo.

Not needed to have a massive conspiracy here, just a downsizing corporate American and culture crashes. Choosing a platform that didn't exist at the time didn't help.Reply

The OP is just a troll. They are barely cutting 1k jobs in Finland. I guess the better alternative would have been for MS to let them collapse and then they could have just bought the patents and some of the engineers at auction. Oops, I meant dollar sign Microsoft!!Reply

What patents? Most of the patents belongs to the network business any way and they have turned that business around. It's disingenuous or flawed to just go at it at that angle, the mobile business wasn't worth anything after they switched to Microsoft, and the business is worth more without it. Microsoft already got a hold of patents to troll with through other ventures and has some of the best from their own business already. They didn't buy the patents that Nokia sold to NPE's in recent years either. Of course there's no other alternative now, and it hasn't been one since the summer of '11, most of the engineering resources was already gone by that time and they had nothing for them except Qualcomm platforms and Microsoft software. Finland was already massively hit, at least now most that is left have jobs making hardware for Microsoft.Reply

I had an E71 and it was the biggest piece of shit. Symbian was complete garbage and grossly outdated.

Symbian Anna was based on a 10-year-old kernel. That'd be like Windows Phone still running a Windows CE kernel, and then some.

The future of Nokia was in Meego, and that is perhaps what Elop can be held accountable for ditching. In the same way Apotheker screwed Palm when HP purchased them, Elop screwed Nokia by not letting them move forward with innovation.

Nokia had far more potential than RIM to transition to a competitive smartphone platform simply because of their simpler devices, greater market reach, design quality, and price. But Nokia did screw up sticking with Symbian as long as they did and Elop took advantage of it.Reply

so why did MS buy it then if it had nothing in terms of future? I see windows Phone operating system going somewhere. Android has basically stalled in terms of innovation and getting any better. But I see windows 's Operating system for the phone looking really sweet! I think we will see people installing windows phone O/S on any phone the user desires. kinda like the PC market! as long as it's compatible you can run it. and I like that idea. Note 3 with windows O/S on it..... NICE Reply

Certainly, though, you have to admit Elop the Double Agent tanking the company by focusing exclusively on an OS without apps in a market that craves apps was always going to be a losing proposition. If they'd gone Android, they could have used their hardware that was always praised to garner sales and produced some decent numbers. Far more than they ever got with Windows Phone.

Elop WAS there to drive down the overall price of the purchase. When the Nokia Board rebelled and started up an Android initiative, that's when Ballmer had to bite the bullet, go to the MS board and admit that the strategy was on the verge of outright failure because he'd bet his job on the fact that Nokia's tanking price would make the purchase far cheaper than it wound up being (betting on Elop keeping them Windows Phone focused far longer) and that Nokia's sheer presence would compel OTHER companies to make Windows Phone more of a priority.

Unfortunately, it didn't work out like he wanted. He loses his job and Microsoft is faced with the choice of losing their primary/only ODM or buying them at a somewhat inflated price. Neither choice was particularly great for MS or Nokia.Reply

Windows phone 7 was a great OS, problem was it came out in q4 2010. Android prior to Android 4 was pure junk, problem was we were already on Android 2.3 by q4 2010 and thus Android had a lot of inertia, Android 4 came out q4 2011.

The Burning Platform memo happened in q1 2011, and the first nokia windows phone 7 devices came out q4 2011.

So in effect Windows Phone 7 had only 1 year to make any inroads. If Windows Phone 7 came out in 2008 or 2009 we would be saying a different story. By the time Android 4 came out, it had so much inertia there was little chance for windows phone.

Now a lot of this is armback quartering 4 years later, but all the info was still out there 5 years ago, it was a gamble but the Stephen Elop hooking Nokia up with Windows Phone instead of Android was the very definition of high risk yet possible high reward and we knew this in 2010.Reply

I understand the job loss sentiments; the number in the states of employees being dropped is large. That is a huge number.

With that being said, Nokia shot itself in the shoulder and hip by clinging to Symbian. It simply sucked - I don't understand those comment-ers who liked it. What Nokia is doing now is pretty decent, but still hamstringed by Microsoft's lack of concern for this market (Windows Phone OS).

What remains to be seen is if they pursue the right ideas in the right ways. It is not that they miss the market. It is just that they make poor decisions early on and cling to them till the outrage gets too loud to ignore. This is a running theme. Cutting 25,000 employees won't fix that. They could probably cut 100 decision makers and right the ship instead.

A recap of the Eff-up:

Windows Mobile - crappy browser and no effort for v5 & 6; 7 was a keep the user on the desktop mentality along with no apps and leaving early adopters high and dry & 8 is a decent attempt but lagging behind competitors.

Windows desktop -Poor certification program execution = what I mean is that Windows 8.0 should have been tablet or touchscreen device only. They could have then kept Windows 7 front and center for pure desktop environments. This also happened partially with Vista where certified hardware was too weak for the OS and pretty much every user had to go out and upgrade their brand new computers right after the bought it; for the enterprise side: no partner compatibility commitment and sloooowww development (antivirus was not straight for a whole year and device compatibility [printers - yes you HP] was non-existent on current models). Microsoft simply needs to be more strict with the stickers and their hardware partners because consumers bear the brunt of the hardware partners' mistakes.

Windows Server - this has actually been decent. I don't agree with killing home server, but they should have made a cheaper standard version for advanced home users like me.

Xbox - too greedy and too easy for the NSA to take advantage of (kinect + always on internet). These poor decisions will linger eventhough they retract them. I say NSA because their mouths' (General Alexander was getting happy in his Star Trek chair over the product announcement) were watering with the capabilities of in home surveillance across the world with Xbox's capabilities and MS's inability to strongly implement security mechanisms.

"This also happened partially with Vista where certified hardware was too weak for the OS and pretty much every user had to go out and upgrade their brand new computers right after the bought it"

SHOCKING that companies like ACer releasing desktops with only 256MB ram... MS got the blame for that one which was VERY unfair. The computer could run Vista, hence the certificate, even though it ran like rubbishReply

Do you care about the others from MS as well? I'm thinking that you're just trolling. Did you care when 40% staff from the company I work for were let go? What about when other companies did it?

MS actually saved Nokia and, frankly, look at the bigger picture instead of thinking with your emotions. This is BUSINESS! The people working there, be they talented, will have no issues securing a new position elsewhere. Reply

As someone who lives in the area and knows some of the people who have been laid-off, this is not true. Microsoft has been collecting bloat (especially from overseas) and now is letting them go. It provided a solid well-paying secure job. Now they are forced to go find another place and even though there is Amazon and (a small) Google presence, neither of them will be looking to add bloat. Many will forced to move and their lives will be thoroughly disturbedReply

In the immediate future you seem to be correct, I hope 3 months or 6 months down the road we will have more of a vision and logistical strategy on how to improve the company. A new ceo in theory could do this. Microsoft has many products that need to be improved very rapidly, sometimes adding more hands on deck can achieve that, sometimes it detracts.Reply

They are removing dead wood. Every single company, over time, accumulates certain 'elements' that do need to be replaced or let go. That's business. Plus it also improves the bottom line but that is NOT the objective here. MS wants to see where they're going and that's easier with less bloat.

I've been made redundant twice. It isn't fun but I can see why it happened in each case.Reply

Microsoft is going to create a serious problem with those 13K people fired from Nokia.

Their main, if not the only relevant, hardware manufacturer for windows phone has just been ackquired. 40% of the workers will be fired, leaving the rest, including many frieds, just pissed off and angry with their new employer.

Let alone the socipolitical effects in Finland and Europe of such decision, which will for sure have an impact on the Nokia brand. And Windows Phone isn't exactly on a position to piss off potential buyers, if such thing exists at this point.Reply

Most in Europe are already gone anyways when they shrunk it from 58 thousands to 30 thousands. Oulu-facility transfered to Accenture closed, the plant in Salo closed, many others sacked. Cluj-plant in Romania closed, Komárom plant in Hungary was seriously cut and so on and on. It's hardly much folks left in Finland accept a few doing handset design and adapting the OS.Reply

They need to cut 100% of their workforce. They should just borrow $500 billion, use the money to buy back all their stock, and then disappear into oblivion. They are such a terrible company. Their bad programming and gross incompetence has done nothing but hold back PC technology, moreso than any other company. Windows 8 still has several debilitating bugs that will never, ever get fixed. Reply